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If-- / Rudyard Kipling
, Garden City, New York, 1910.]] "If—'" is a poem written in 1895Journals: Captain Scott's last expedition Oxford University Press, 2006 by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of Rewards and Fairies, Kipling's 1910 collection of short stories and poems. History Like William Ernest Henley's "Invictus", "If-- is a memorable evocation of Victorian stoicism and the 'stiff upper lip' that popular culture has made into a traditional British virtue.Spartans and Stoics - Stiff Upper Lip - Icons of England Retrieved February 20, 2011 Its status is confirmed both by the number of parodies it has inspired, and by the widespread popularity it still enjoys amongst Britons. It is often voted Britain's favourite poem.Emma Jones (2004) The Literary Companion Robson, 2004.Mike Robinson (2004) Literature and tourism The poem's line, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same" is written on the wall of the Centre Court players' entrance at the British tennis tournament, Wimbledon, and the entire poem was read in a promotional video for the Wimbledon 2008 gentleman's final by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.Des Kelly (7th July 2008) Federer's a winner for taking defeat like a man, my son Daily Mail Retrieved 30 November 2010Rafael Nadal: MaÃ®tre sur terre L'EQUIPE, 2008RenÃ© Stauffer The Roger Federer Story: Quest for Perfection New Chapter Press According to Kipling in his autobiography Something of Myself, posthumously published in 1937, the poem was inspired by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, who in 1895 led a raid by British forces against the Boers in South Africa, subsequently called the Jameson Raid.Fordham.edu: Modern History Sourcebook This defeat increased the tensions that ultimately led to the Second Boer War. The British press, however, portrayed Jameson as a hero in the middle of the disaster, and the actual defeat as a British victory. Reaction Kipling himself noted in Something of Myself that the poem had been "printed as cards to hang up in offices and bedrooms; illuminated text-wise and anthologized to weariness".[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400691.txt etext of Something of Myself] T.S. Eliot in his essays on Kipling's work describes Kipling's verse as "great verse" that sometimes unintentionally changes into poetry. George Orwell - an ambivalent admirer of Kipling's work who hated the poet's politics - compared people who only knew "If-- "and some of his more sententious poems", to Colonel Blimp.George Orwell, [http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/Orwell-B.htm Review of ''A Choice of Kipling's Verse ], 1942 Khushwant Singh, an Indian writer, claims that Kipling's "If--" is "the essence of the message of The Gita in English".Khushwant Singh, [http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211656 ''Review of ''The Book of Prayer by Renuka Narayanan ], 2001 The text Singh refers to is the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Indian scripture. "If—" was voted the United Kingdom's favorite poem in a 1995 BBC opinion poll."If--- by Rudyard Kipling", Academy of American Poets, Poets.org, Web, Sep. 12, 2011. Translations "If-- has been translated into many languages. It was translated by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. Another Nobel laureate to translate "If-- was Yugoslav writer Ivo AndriÄ‡. Some translations are: *''Indien, into Dutch by J.M. de Vries de Waal.[http://4umi.com/kipling/if/nl.htm 4umi.com: Indien, Kipling translated] *''××'' (im), into Hebrew by Eliyahu Tsiper The translation in Wikisources *''Ha'' into Hungarian by GÃ¡bor DevecseriTau.ac.il: Comments on Two Hungarian Translations DezsÅ‘ KosztolÃ¡nyi and LÅ‘rinc SzabÃ³. *''Ja'', into Latvian by unknown.E-Mistika *''Vitanao ve?, into Malagasy by Rajaona Andriamananjarahttp://worldlibrary.net/eBooks/Wordtheque/mg/AAAAAF.TXT *''Se, into Portuguese by Guilherme de AlmeidaFolha Online 5/5/2007 *''JeÅ¼eli..., into Polish by unknown NajpiÄ™kniejsze wiersze *''DacÄƒ, into Romanian, by Dan DuÅ£escuRudyard Kipling - IF / DACÄ‚ *''Ð—Ð°Ð¿Ð¾Ð²ÐµÐ´ÑŒ'', into Russian by Mikhail Lozinsky.Lib.ru: Five Russian versions *''Ð•ÑÐ»Ð¸..., into Russian by Samuil Marshak.Lib.ru: Five Russian versions *''KeÄ into Slovak by Ä½ubomÃr Feldek[http://pravda.newtonit.sk/tisk.asp?cache=569678: KeÄ published in Pravda (line breaks are missing)] *''KdyÅ¾'' into Czech by Otokar Fischerhttp://ld.johanesville.net/kipling-06-kdyz *''If''. into Hindi by Prabhash Nirbhay http://prabhashnirbhay.blogspot.com/2011/04/if.html *"Náº¿u" into Vietnamese by Nguyá»…n Viáº¿t Tháº¯ng. References External links ;Text * "If —" at Representative Poetry Online * Authentic digital editions archive of "If--" multiform editions at Dalhousie University Library, Canada - Original Author Autographed, Calligraphed/Typed Broadsides, Collector Multipage and Human Voice, Enhanced Video based Multimedia" ;Audio / video * George Horne's typographic animation of "If--" (read by Des Lynam, music by FaurÃ©). *"If" at YouTube * Free human-read audio recordings of "If--" at LibriVox Category:Poetry by Rudyard Kipling Category:1910 poems Category:Poems Category:19th-century poems Category:English poets Category:Text of poem